


Death and the Maiden

by rosatremaine



Category: Finnish Mythology, Greek and Roman Mythology, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: F/F, Kinky Wives, Mystery and suspense, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-20 14:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17623928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosatremaine/pseuds/rosatremaine
Summary: Connect-fic to The End of All Things. TEoAT Universe.Hela & Persephone seem to have it all - a great marriage, a whole realm to play with, dead people to herd - but when a mysterious stranger appears in Helheim, their eternal lives are turned upside down. Can they right the terrible wrongs of history? And will they ever have a moment's peace and quiet again?





	1. Hades Interruptus

“The road to Hel is paved with good intentions,” said Hela, smiling gently as she idly ran her ungloved index finger around the rim of her silver goblet, “so how did you get here? I  _ know _ your intentions were always completely impure.” 

Her wife smirked. “Sweetheart, you can’t possibly be right about that! I was just a young innocent maiden, remember?”

The Goddess of Death gave her a meaningful look. “Just because you were called Kore doesn’t mean you were innocent. You’ve always had an eye for the bad girls, don’t try to deny it.”

“Bad, no. Exquisitely, deliciously evil? Maybe.”

Hela put down her wine and was about to show Seph just how deliciously evil she could be, when Seph tilted her head to one side and frowned. “Is your goblet meant to be doing that?”

 

_ That _ was what appeared to be a sort of shivering dance across the polished malachite tabletop, and the answer was most definitely not. The cause of this impromptu ballet was a distinct low rumble, which seemed to be growing louder and more insistent. A huge plume of inky black smoke appeared in the centre of the room, accompanied by a tremor so strong that the goblet launched itself over the edge of the table and spilled its contents across the marble floor.

“Are we expecting someone?” Seph asked her wife.

“We are  _ not _ ,” said Hela between her teeth. “Those old biddies are playing games with me.”

Persephone rolled her eyes. “What did you do this time?”

Hela shot her a reproachful glare. “Why do you assume I’ve done anything?’

“Because the only times they mess with us are directly after you’ve reminded them how much like your father you are.”

 

The plume of smoke hissed, interrupting this promising domestic dispute, and vomited out what looked like a large bundle of rags before dissipating in ominous silence.

“They’re going to regret this,” muttered Hela, stalking over to the bundle and tugging at it with distaste. “They think they can just foist Verðanði’s old shawls onto me. I’m not the Goddess of Goodwill, for pity’s sake—”

Persephone had been observing with a great deal of amusement, but stopped smiling as her wife broke off with a very odd expression on her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”

“It’s not a shawl. It’s … a dead person.”

Seph couldn’t help but smile a little again. “Well, we  _ are _ in Helheim, and you  _ are _ the Queen of the Dead.” 

“No, Seph, not a  _ gast _ , a dead  _ body _ . I’m not supposed to get  _ bodies _ . They’re supposed to have left those behind by the time they get to me!”

“Did someone send it to the wrong address?”

“Be serious. This isn’t the Post Office. Although … It would annoy the old bats upstairs if I just wrote ‘Return to Sender’ on this poor bastard and sent him up to them, wouldn’t it?”

 

The body chose this moment to gasp and sit up, much to the consternation of Hela and Seph. 

“He’s not dead,” Seph nudged her wife.

“I can see that! What I want to know is what he’s doing here. You!” she hauled the un-dead-body to his feet unceremoniously, “Where did you come from and why are you here?”

It was impossible to determine his age; he might have been as old as Yggdrassil or as young as the average Midgardian. There was something odd about his face - a hazy, vacant look that seemed to permeate his very skin and emanate waves of confusion.

He looked neither afraid nor angry, nor even sad, but simply … lost. “I don’t know.” 

“Well, then, who are you?” Hela was entirely nonplussed and unused to this feeling. She did not like it.

The hazy look only grew worse, if possible. He shook his head fuzzily. “I … don’t know that, either.”

“What is the matter with him?” whispered Seph.

“I have no idea,” said Hela grimly, “but I can tell you that the Norns are about to receive a visit from me. This nonsense has to stop.”


	2. Interdimensional Man of Mystery

As she ejected herself from a column of dark, pine-green smoke onto the invisible floor of the Norns’ Hall, Hela wondered, not for the first time, if the denizens of the space directly above her realm had lost the plot completely. 

Over the years she and they had developed a peculiar relationship based mainly on mutual frustration and malice, and it wasn’t by any means unheard of for them to play various tricks on each other, ranging from Hela spilling water on their floor so that it froze into an extremely slippery ice-rink to the Norns retaliating by starting a plague on Vanaheim and inundating her with untimely  _ gasts _ (the paperwork had been excruciating that week). Sending her a not-quite-dead amnesiac was a new one, though. 

 

As usual, the Norns were not forthcoming at once, although they must be aware of her presence. Hela was always irritated by this, and suspected that was why they took so long to appear when she visited. She was used to being the ultimate monarch of her domain, unquestioned and absolute, and the Norns seemed to think it their duty to remind her that she was not Queen above-stairs. 

 

“Alright, I’ve had enough of playing hide-and-seek with you. We need to talk, and I don’t enjoy trying to have a conversation with a wall.” 

 

With an eerie chuckle, one of them materialised out of the darkness behind the stone columns of the hall. “We’ll talk when I say we talk, your Majesty.” 

 

Hela wondered how it was possible for an old crone to make her feel so small and awkward with so few words. She, the Queen of the Dead, Mistress of the Underworld, wife of Persephone! It was this last fact that made her square her shoulders and try again, though with slightly less flippant boldness this time. “Urðr, I want to know why I’m getting live people now instead of  _ gasts _ .” 

 

Urðr cackled, almost out of habit, but the mirth didn’t ring true even in her usual mocking way. “Who knows why anything happens?” 

 

“ _ You’re _ supposed to know. Otherwise what is the point of you?” Hela knew she was being harsh, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care at this moment. Something was very wrong. 

 

A second Norn stepped out of the shadows: Skuld, the youngest, taller and less wizened than the ancient Urðr. Her face was grave, but then it always was. Her hair was ice-blonde and neatly woven into a thick, shining braid, totally unlike Urðr’s coarse but thinning white strands or Verðanði’s tousled, flyaway silver-shot brown mop. It was always interesting to Hela just how different these three sisters of the wyrd were. Urðr, vicious and snide, brimming with malicious humour, the knowledge of the ages always hidden up her sleeve; Verðanði, vague, sweet and gentle, wise in a soft and nebulous sort of way; and Skuld, serious, upright Skuld, a balancing force between the chaotic energies of her two older sisters, a calming presence even in the face of fear. 

 

“Something is happening that has disturbed the normal order of things,” said Skuld, a small tremor passing across her face. 

Suppressing her first instinct to say something about having a firm grasp of the obvious, Hela asked, “But why has this person been sent to me? Magic has reasons for everything it does -  _ you _ taught me that!” 

 

A light caress to her left shoulder was the only announcement of Verðanði’s presence Hela received before she began to talk. 

“Dear child, it’s good to see you again, even under such difficult circumstances. We hardly see you now that you are below us. I’m not one to dwell in the past, of course, but your childish laughter remains in my heart as one of the sweetest things I’ve experienced.”

 

Verðanði might be infuriatingly unspecific in her speech, but you couldn’t help liking her. She exuded a kind of quaint charm, and had about her an old-world sweetness rather like a fluffy, cloud-pink marshmallow. Hela felt a rush of warm feeling toward her old guardian. Verðanði was always her favourite, the one she had turned to for immediate comfort when prickly Urðr had wounded her feelings as a child and Skuld had been too focused on consequences to be sympathetic.

 

“It’s good to see you too! But I am increasingly concerned about this … anomaly. I have no information about this man. There was no paperwork, because he isn’t a  _ gast _ . He has no memory of who he is or how he arrived here, and I don’t even know where to start with investigating! I’ve never had anything like this occur before.” 

 

The uncharacteristically focused look Verðanði was now giving her was the most unsettling part of this whole experience, honestly. “I cannot answer that, Hela. You know I deal only in things present. The only person who knows why this is happening is Urðr. She remembers the past. And something tells me that the roots of this disturbance grew a long time ago.” 

 

Hela would have liked nothing better than to stride across to the eldest Norn and shake the truth out of her, but even the Queen of the Dead might hesitate to lay hands on the most powerful of the Fate-Spinners. “Urðr, please, if you do know something about this, I must hear it. How can I rule the underworld properly if I don’t know what is going on?”

 

The ancient Norn’s gaze was uneven; her left eye was rheumy, glazed with the milky fog of extreme age, but her right was as sharp and cold as a Jotun ice-lance. She muttered something Hela couldn’t understand or really hear very well, and skipped off down the hallway with an energetic, dancing step that looked very much out of place on her gnarled frame. 

 

“Where are you going?” Hela called after her, but Urðr was singing now, and paid her no attention. The song was formless and ethereal, an eldritch vine of arcane words strung together and reaching out tendrils of runic power across the echoing darkness of the hall. It gave Hela the chills. She followed Urðr to the end of the hall, and as the song built and rose into the musty air, a swirling eddy of blue light began to form in the invisible floor directly in front of where the eldest Norn stood. 

_ Urðr’s Well _ , thought Hela. It had been a very long time since she had last witnessed its appearance - so long, in fact, that the memory of it was patchy and incomplete, as though it were a bindrune scratched into sand and the waves had washed half of it away.

But by the time she reached the end of the Norns’ Hall, the Well had vanished again, and Urðr stood with a crafty expression on her face, staring into the emptiness where it had been. 

 

“Did you see anything?” asked Hela, impatient for some explanation. 

 

“Not a thing, brat, not a thing. The Well is hungry and won’t speak to me. I must get it some more souls.” 

 

_ You’re lying to me, and I don’t know why. _ Aloud Hela said, “Very well then, if you can’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll just have to find it out some other way.” 

 

Before Urðr could react, she whisked herself away and disappeared in a puff of dark green smoke. 


End file.
